Curb appeal

Every home owner and home buyer knows how important curb appeal is. I suppose our little cottage had some, but it really had nothing to do with the landscaping and everything to do with the house itself.

Before

As soon as the snow melted, Matt became obsessed with making the grass as green as possible and that quickly evolved into wanting to change the entire landscape. We had the fortunate opportunity to visit the Lexington Home and Garden show in early April and there he fell in love with a tree. In hindsight we should have bought it at the show, instead we decided to take a trip down to the nursery that had it. Glynn Young’s Nursery is located in Nicholasville, KY, about 15 mintues from our house. We were greeted by the owner, Marty, and showed him the landscape plan I had recently worked up on the computer. According to him, the plan would be great for the 2 or 3 weeks flowers were blooming and other than that time it would look like a bed full of weeds. Back to square one, right? No. Marty took a look at the pictures of our house and offered to draw us up a new plan while we waited.

A half hour later we had a completely new landscaping plan for both the front and back and a bit lighter pockets. We took what we could that day and the rest of the plants, including Matt’s beloved Lion’s Head Japanese Maple, were to be delivered the following Saturday. After two very long days of planting, we now have a beautiful front yard.

After

Matt’s beloved tree is the one on the far left and we have nicknamed it “Mr. Miyagi.” It grows very slowly and turns a reddish/orange in the fall. Moving from left to right, there are ghost ferns, a pieris (in the back), blue star junipers, and green tower boxwoods. On the right side, moving from left to right, more green tower boxwoods, blue star junipers, a kousa dogwood, japanese plum yews, hosta, and hydrangeas. The idea is that we will have some color in the beds year round. I also refinished the two large pots using black hammered spray paint.